Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

ARCHAEOLOGY

Medieval Danish Queen’s cellar is one of 2019’s top ten archaeological finds

The discovery of a cellar in Roskilde believed to have belonged to medieval Danish Queen Margrete I is one of this year's ten most important archaeological finds.

Published: 19 December 2019 16:23 CET
Medieval Danish Queen's cellar is one of 2019’s top ten archaeological finds
Photo: Slots- og Kulturstyrelsen

Among other important Danish discoveries this year are an approximately 3,000-year-old sacrificial victim in Thy, a mysterious amber sun disc of amber near Viborg and a Bronze Age burial mound with a crematorium at Bellinge near Odense.

The list was published by the Ministry of Culture’s Agency for Culture and Palaces in a press release.

In Roskilde, medieval archaeologist Jesper Langkilde said he is proud that the cellar is on the annual list.

“It is not commonplace to find such well-preserved ruins from the Middle Ages, and when we can also ascertain that it is very likely that the cellar belonged to Margrete I, that in my brings the discovery into a class of its own,” Langkilde said.

“The fact that the Agency for Culture and Palaces shares that view and has placed the cellar as one of year's top 10 archaeological finds is something I am extremely pleased about,” added Langkilde, who works for the Romu museum group.

The cellar appeared earlier this year amongst remains of masonry, pottery and building materials in Roskilde street Lille Grønnegade.


Photo: ROMU/Slots- og Kulturstyrelsen

It appears to have belonged to Margrete I, who lived from 1353 to 1412 and ruled Denmark, Norway and Sweden.

It is thought to have been part of a house that the Queen ordered built so she could be close to the city’s monastery, Vor Frue Kloster, when she was in Roskilde.

The criteria for being selected on the cultural agency’s list is adding “significant new knowledge of archaeology and Danish history”.

READ ALSO: Stone Age Dane had dark skin and dark hair: DNA study

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.

TODAY IN FRANCE

France to compensate relatives of Algerian Harki fighters

France has paved the way towards paying reparations to more relatives of Algerians who sided with France in their country's independence war but were then interned in French camps.

Published: 16 May 2023 08:29 CEST
France to compensate relatives of Algerian Harki fighters

More than 200,000 Algerians fought with the French army in the war that pitted Algerian independence fighters against their French colonial masters from 1954 to 1962.

At the end of the war, the French government left the loyalist fighters known as Harkis to fend for themselves, despite earlier promises it would look after them.

Trapped in Algeria, many were massacred as the new authorities took revenge.

Thousands of others who fled to France were held in camps, often with their families, in deplorable conditions that an AFP investigation recently found led to the deaths of dozens of children, most of them babies.

READ ALSO Who are the Harkis and why are they still a sore subject in France?

French President Emmanuel Macron in 2021 asked for “forgiveness” on behalf of his country for abandoning the Harkis and their families after independence.

The following year, a law was passed to recognise the state’s responsibility for the “indignity of the hosting and living conditions on its territory”, which caused “exclusion, suffering and lasting trauma”, and recognised the right to reparations for those who had lived in 89 of the internment camps.

But following a new report, 45 new sites – including military camps, slums and shacks – were added on Monday to that list of places the Harkis and their relatives were forced to live, the government said.

Now “up to 14,000 (more) people could receive compensation after transiting through one of these structures,” it said, signalling possible reparations for both the Harkis and their descendants.

Secretary of state Patricia Miralles said the decision hoped to “make amends for a new injustice, including in regions where until now the prejudices suffered by the Harkis living there were not recognised”.

Macron has spoken out on a number of France’s unresolved colonial legacies, including nuclear testing in Polynesia, its role in the Rwandan genocide and war crimes in Algeria.

SHOW COMMENTS